Bodies and Structures 2.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History

Studying Art in Colonial Libraries

On October 28 1927, the first Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition opened in Taipei. It attracted a large crowd of 28119 visitors in only ten days (Taiwan Sōtokufu Bunkyōkyoku Shakaika, ed. Taiwan shakai kyōiku gayō (Taipei: Seibunsha, 1934), 74.). This juried salon for contemporary painting catered to interests of the Japanese colonial government and settler-artists. It projected an image of Japan as a benevolent colonizer and provided Japanese artists in Taiwan with a highly publicized opportunity to prove the quality of their works. In addition, the salon attracted some Taiwanese Chinese artists, few of which secured acceptance for their paintings. The young, largely self-taught painter Guo Xuehu (1908-2012) was one of them.

By 1932, Guo had established his position as a successful emerging artist in Taipei's art circles. In an essay penned in response to a Taiwan-wide competition for library users' stories, he looked back at his artistic debut and singled out the library as his "unparalleled teacher." The essay received the second prize and was published in the Japanese language newspaper Taiwan nichinichi shinpō, turning Guo into a role model for other artists in Taiwan, who were not able to afford studying with an instructor or enroll in an art school in Japan (Compare: Yen in Refracted modernity 103, Liao 2002:216-7) (English translation here).

This module explores the circulation of artistic knowledge in the Japanese empire and the growing proximity/intimacy between the Japanese and Taiwanese art worlds (ADD ref to intimacy & Aimee Kwon). By the late 1920s and 1930s, personal networks, printed media, and official art exhibitions brought Taiwan to the attention of artists in Japan. Similarly, Japanese art world began to loom large in the imagination of young aspiring painters in Taiwan, some of which left for Japan in pursuit of an artistic education and career. 

Art history has only recently turned to considering geography as a critical category of analysis (Kaufmann). Historically, the discipline has followed a national model that highlights "major artists" in "major artistic centers" producing art (often retroactively) deemed as representative of the nation-state. Today, Guo Xuehu belongs to the burgeoning field of Taiwanese art history. By the same token, he is absent from the narrative of Japanese art. Such approach to Japanese modern art history obscures the complicity of Japanese artists in the imperial project as well as the presence of colonial artists within the purview of the empire. By highlighting the proximity/intimacy between the Taiwanese and Japanese art worlds, this project helps us envision the Japanese art world in the 1930s on new terms. 

I argue that in the interwar period Japan's was an imperial art world (teikoku bijutsukai), intimately intertwined with the art worlds of Korea and Taiwan. The imperial art world emerged as a powerful idea and a reality in the making, driven by multiple state and private actors. By paying attention to the flows of information, goods, and people within the Japanese empire, we can write an art history that takes into account these contemporary and highly political practices of place-making. Such approach does not aim to replace the national paradigm with an imperial one, but to draw attention to the disavowed impact of the empire-building on modern art in Japan.   

This module consists of three interlocking pathways that coalesce around Guo Xuehu's prize-winning essay. Each pathway explores the proximity between Japan's and Taiwan's art worlds through a different scale and infrastructure: 1) discourse of art education (information/knowledge), 2) institution of the library and books (built environment, vehicles), and 3) a career of an individual artist (figure). Each pathway introduces relevant primary sources with English translations and a list of questions as a material for discussion and research projects in an undergraduate classroom. 

This page is tagged by: Flows, Built Environment, Vehicle, Information / Knowledge, Figure

PROXIMITY/DISTANCE
CONNECT TO KATES MODULE (TAIWANS ELITE STUDENTS) & SHELLENS MODULE (GLOBALLY MOBILE COLONIAL SOCIAL SCIENCE)

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